Abstract

Drawing on more than 15 years of ongoing ethnographic research in Ho Chi Minh City, this chapter explores the dilemmas of freedom, constraint, anxiety, and morality experienced by middle-class women with respect to finances, family, fashion, and fitness. Although many women welcome the chance for self-determination afforded by new forms of production and consumption, and this might signal a retreat of the state from involvement in private life, this chapter demonstrates that market-oriented economic policies have enabled the Vietnamese government and communist party to interpellate women as consumer-citizens in new commercial arenas.

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